Fortune's Hand (3 page)

“There's a terrible accident,” he said. “A stranger walks in to talk it over, changes the direction of another man's life, and walks out. Tell me, was I suddenly crazy, or wasn't I?”

“Why Robb, you've always had this in the back of your mind, and I've always known you had it,” Lily said. “You just didn't think it made any sense for you, so you didn't talk about it, that's all.”

Mrs. Webster spoke sharply. When she wanted to, Mrs. Webster could be very sharp indeed. “If you want my answer, Robb, I'll give it to you. Yes, it was a crazy impulse.”

“Mother!” cried Lily.

“That's all right. Robb knows how I feel about him. I feel close, and that's why I dare to speak out. You've thrown away a good certainty in exchange for the unknown, Robb. Besides, the man flummoxed you. Your
parents were killed. And if not for a few extra inches of space, you'd have gone with them. You should have gotten a fortune out of it, and you took peanuts instead.”

“Should have and could have are two different things, Mrs. Webster.”

“You were flummoxed, Robb.”

“Mother! We've been over this before. Anyway, I don't agree with you,” Lily protested.

“I'm not trying to make trouble,” her mother said more softly. “Who wishes the two of you any better than I do? You need to be married, that's what. You've delayed long enough. It's not healthy.”

She is afraid I will make Lily pregnant, Robb thought, hurt her child. My God, hurt Lily?

But in one way, Mrs. Webster was right. They did need to be together. Three years was too long to wait. He should have thought of that before. Somehow in the back of his mind that day, he had made the assumption—without thinking he had made it—that Lily would go along wherever he went. But when the law school acceptance had arrived and they had gone looking for an apartment in the city, they had found that rentals, even for the cramped quarters where law students lodged, were expensive. The “generous allowance” barely stretched to meet the most simple needs.

“If you could get work up there—” Mrs. Webster began, but seeing Lily's face, stopped.

“I've told you I tried, Mother. It's impossible for me, inexperienced as I am, to get a big-city job. I'm very lucky to be in the library here.”

“We'll manage,” Robb said. “A three-hour bus ride isn't a world away. You'll drive over through Marchfield where the bus stops on the highway. And sometimes you may want to take the bus up my way,” he added, not adding that they had already designated their meeting place at a motel halfway between home and the capital.

Lily touched Robb's hand. “Don't worry about a thing. I'll be saving for our own place,” she said. “By the time you're finished, we'll be ready to start out together, and we'll still be very young.” Her eyes were radiant. “Look here, there's a course in environmental law. That sounds like your thing, doesn't it? Here's another.”

Her forehead creased and her lips were pursed above the catalog. She looked like a serious child doing homework. I don't deserve you, he thought. There isn't a selfish bone in your body. No, I don't deserve you, but neither do I know anybody else who does. And suddenly he was flooded with a love so tender that it was almost pain.

At six in the morning at the end of August, the sun was on his right as he drove northward. He had rented a car for the day. In it were all his worldly possessions: photographs of Lily, his parents, and the old house; his clothes, bedding, and his books. There were not many of the latter, since books were expensive; a set of Shakespeare, some American histories, a history of the Second World War, in which his father had fought, and the
collected works of his favorite poet, Stephen Spender, were all.

He had expected to play the radio for company on the solitary drive, but sounds of any kind just now would grate upon his mood, which was a troubled conglomeration of wistful thoughts about Lily, of last minute doubts, of fears and prideful anticipation, all of which had seemed to settle themselves in his nervous stomach.

He had not seen this particular stretch of road since the night of the accident, and now, as the fateful intersection neared, he would have done anything to avoid it. Since that was an impossibility he steeled himself, pressed on the pedal, and raced past it. “They didn't feel anything,” he said aloud. “Everyone told me the same. The cops and the doctors told me. They didn't feel anything.”

Heat glimmered on the road ahead and on the fields alongside it, where cattle grazed under the brutal sun with hardly an island of shade where they might huddle for relief. Cruel slaughter was their ultimate fate. Mercifully—scant mercy—they did not know it.

The land was so flat, in places he could see the horizon all about him, drawing a circle on the enormous sky. Then he knew for sure that he was speeding on a sphere that was itself speeding through space, and the sensation was so eerie that he had to turn to the radio for relief after all.

The familiar thrum and twang of country music filled the silence for another hour. Then gradually the landscape changed: the straight, monotonous road
curved upward through low hills and denser foliage. Rural acres became country estates; these became suburbs; and after a few more miles, the road would become an avenue into the heart of the city.

Robb had not been in the capital for years. When he was twelve, he had been taken to see it and had had no reason to go there again until his visit and application to the school of law. Now, to his adult eye, these structures, the capitol, the federal-style courthouses, columned and pedimented like the Parthenon, had an impressive grandeur that the twelve-year-old eye most certainly had missed. Suddenly, as he drove through the Sunday morning downtown, there sounded a peal of church bells, bringing as suddenly a half memory of an ancient stanza about Bow Bells and “Turn again, Whittington, Lord Mayor of London.” The country hick was approaching the great city.

Well, here I am
, he thought with amusement,
stuffed with unrealistic hopes. And yet, why not?

The university stood at the other end of the broad central avenue. It looked like almost every university described in books and pictured on film: a cluster of dignified stone Gothic buildings in a setting of lawns and rich old trees. Passing it, Robb was once more amused at himself for feeling already a possessive loyalty.

And yet, why not?

“H
ard to believe this is our third year,” said Eddy Morse.

The aged frame house on Mill Street had five apartments, and in every one of them, the air conditioning was humming. But still there were times when, craving some real air, people would rather spend an evening hour on the front steps in the heat.

“I don't know how you can stand the summers in this lousy climate,” he continued, wiping his face.

Eddy was from Chicago as well as from Oregon, where his divorced father lived, and also from Washington, where his numerous extended family lived.

“You forget I'm a Southerner,” Robb replied.

“Forget? How could I? Fried chicken and grits.”

“Also pecan pie. You dig into those right enough when Lily sends me one.”

Eddy grinned. His face was likeable, round-cheeked with a round-tipped, bulbous nose to match his
rounded shoulders. He was as tall as Robb but burly and seemed to be shorter. He was everybody's friend, sincerely, believably so. On that memorable first day, he had been the first to greet Robb as he was unloading his car.

“Here, I'll give you a hand,” he had said. “Are you the upstairs or the down? There's one left on each floor.”

“Number two.”

“Across the hall from me. I've already filled my refrigerator, so come have a beer after we empty your car. I guess you know there's parking in the rear.”

“I don't have a car. This is rented for the day.”

“Well, it's only a short walk to the school. I can always give you a lift if you want one, anyway.”

“Thanks. It's nice of you to offer.”

“Why the hell not?” And there came the nice grin again.

Eddy always wanted to talk, but now seeing Robb with a book in hand, he fell silent. Robb was indeed reading, although being tired, he was not concentrating; no doubt as a result of the summer's overwork, he was allowing his thoughts to wander.

The summer had been extremely successful. He had spent it doing research for a professor who was preparing a textbook. His résumé was superior: He was an editor on Law Review, and his grades were at the top of the class. He was not exactly a grind—he would hate to be known as one—but he was not extremely sociable either, which was due in part to his need to watch every dollar, and in part to Lily.

Whatever free time he had was spent with her, usually at the halfway motel. Physically, it was a musty place, and as a setting for lovers, it was barely ideal. It was tawdry. But going to Lily's house was worse than nothing. There they had to sleep apart, he on the sofa and she in her own room next to Mrs. Webster's. When Lily came up here, it was a late night's journey. The last year, he thought now, only the rest of this year to go.

And yet in so many ways, the life here had been so good. It was cheerful, orderly, and very, very busy. The cramped apartments, all occupied by law students, were adequate, and the tiny kitchen quarters were new and clean. The students made their own dinners, which generally consisted of spaghetti, being cheap and easy to prepare.

Eddy Morse was the exception. He ate very well, with visible results, and very expensively.

“Come on out,” he liked to say. “I feel like a steak tonight.” Or he might “feel like Italian.”

He always tried to find a companion. It was Robb who, after the first dinner, the price of which had appalled him, refused to go again.

“I can't afford to,” he had told Eddy frankly.

“You can't? Oh, I didn't know. I had no idea—”

“What? That I had no money?”

“I never thought about it.”

Yes, probably when you owned a new Chrysler coupe, had a first-class stereo in your room and cash in your pocket, you didn't think about it.

“Well, come anyway, Robb. I've enough for the two of us.”

“I can't do that.”

“Yes, you can. Robb, don't be embarrassed. Don't be foolish. We're going to be friends, and I like your company.”

“I know, and I appreciate it, but I still can't do it.”

“Listen. If it'll make you feel better, I'll call it a loan. You can pay me back when you're a great success, because that's what you're going to be.”

“Anytime you go out for a hamburger, something I can afford, I'll go with you. I'd like that, Eddy.”

“Okay. I won't argue with the smartest guy in the class. Because that's what you are, and everybody knows it. You know it, too.”

Perhaps fate had its own way of apportioning good things, for although Eddy did have plenty of worldly goods, he was also at the bottom of his class. He would make it through, but without distinction. And he knew that, clearly. He was, however, not disturbed at all. He had all sorts of connections, “knew his way around,” and would possibly go into real estate law.

“Building or politics,” he would say blithely. “Or maybe both. They're usually connected, anyway.”

He found Robb interesting and said so. “I don't know many guys—none, come to think of it—who've kept on with one girl all this time and been satisfied. You're never tempted?”

“Not really. I look, of course I do. But then I think of Lily.”

“She's a cute thing, that I have to admit. Mighty cute.”

“She's a lot more than that,” Robb would answer, closing the subject.

Now Eddy stood up. “I'm going in.”

It was past twilight now, almost dark, and mosquitoes were singing. Robb got up, too.

“Any classes for you tomorrow afternoon, Robb? It's Friday.”

“No. Why?”

“Thought maybe you'd like to drive someplace for a swim, then stop off and eat.”

“Thanks, no. I've got a pile of stuff to do.”

He intended, though did not say so, to visit the federal court. The place lured him with its authority, the solemnity of its dark wood panels, its gilded moldings, and the flag with the eagle on the tip. The judge in his robe had an incomparable dignity. The lawyers who argued before him were often monotonous and verbose, but from others occasionally flowed words that were worthy of Dickens; it was then that Robb felt the marvelous power of language, and was stirred to the heart.

“Don't you ever do anything but work?” demanded Eddy with slight impatience.

“You know I do. But give me a rain check, will you?”

There was no use trying to explain.

One warm evening in late August, Robb, opening the door to a peremptory knock, saw Eddy and the other occupants of the house standing in the hall.

“I thought I heard you banging around down here,”
Walt said. “Weren't you supposed to be leaving town for the weekend?”

“I was, but there's flooding down home, and the buses are detouring via the North Pole, so I've been moving bookcases instead.”

“The hell with that. Leave the books and come along to a party. Big house, great food, plenty to drink—and girls.”

“Don't talk girls to Robb,” somebody shouted from the rear. “He already has one, didn't you know?”

Of course they knew. Had he not been for the last two years the object of enough good-natured jokes and good-natured laughter, as now?

“Never mind,” Eddy said. “You can drink and eat. God, all you live on is spaghetti.”

That was true, or almost. All you had to add were cold cereal, milk, and canned vegetables. Recalling some of his rare dinners out with Eddy, the steaks, his first genuine Maine lobster, all five pounds of it, Robb's mouth watered.